For Kim, her journey began in 2000, when at the age of 13, she faced cancer for the first time. Eighth grade was just beginning and her high-level soccer team in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California and was gearing up for the national cup. Kim was a very strong player. As the season progressed, she started developing a cough. It was a cold and rainy year, and Kim was treated for bronchitis. Over the next few months, she began to sustain unusual injuries to her ankles and then to her knees. Kim began to lose weight. The cough went away and came back. Since she now had to wear knee braces, the team coaches decided to make her goalie.
The national championship happened in San Bernardino the weekend just before Valentines Day. The team started to warm up 7 AM. Kim turned to her mom and said, �I�m having a hard time breathing.� Her mom told the coaches� �Sorry, you have no goalie.� They wrapped her up in blankets and she sat the game out. They noticed there was a swollen spot on her neck.
Valentines Day followed, and even though Kim did not feel well, she very much wanted to go to school. She received her first bouquet of flowers from a boy and showed the whole neighborhood when she got home. Kim did not have the appearance at all of someone who was gravely ill. But that evening, her parents rushed her to Urgent Care. There, the doctor took chest x-rays and sent her immediately to Los Robles Medical Hospital in Thousand Oaks. Something in that x-ray really scared the urgent care doctor and he moved very quickly.
At Los Robles Medical, the emergency staff asked a barrage of scary questions of Kim and her family. Was there cancer in the family? Who had it, what did they have, when did they have it? Yet the ER doctors were unable to offer any answers to their own questions. The staff packed up all the test results, records and x-rays, gave it to the family and told them�go to Children�s Hospital in Los Angeles first thing in the morning. That was one of the most frightening nights of their lives.
At Children�s Hospital the next morning, the Thornes met with a woman named Heidi, who showed them around and introduced them to their doctor. Heidi assured Kim and her parents that if it was in fact cancer (and it might not be), most of childhood cancers were 80-90% curable. That was the best part of the worst news for them. By the end of Kim�s first day at Children�s Hospital, she was diagnosed with cancer. They discovered a large solid tumor measuring 16 centimeters in the center of her chest. Kim�s tumor was so large that it was termed Stage Three B. They were able to biopsy to swollen node in her neck and determined the she had Hodgkin�s lymphoma. What they later learned was one of her lungs was about to collapse.
